Grove Labs say even city dwellers can be their own farmers, cutting out trucking, improving diet, and no matter where you live, it promises to be easy.

"You can grow healthy food, 24/7, 365 in a high-rise building," said Gabe Blanchet, the co-founder and CEO of Grove Labs.

Blanchet's vision is to change how people think about food. Along with his best friend, Jamie Byron, he came up with the concept at MIT when Byron pieced together an ecosystem to grow food in their fraternity. He says it had nothing to do with the offerings at the dining hall.

"The dining at MIT it's actually come a long way in the past five years. With that said, yeah, MIT students could be healthier," Blanchet said.

As could the world, he said. Blanchet and Byron are testing prototypes of Grove systems which right now operate using aquaponics. The approach starts with a fish tank, where the fish do most of the work.

"So you have your fish and you feed your fish, their waste is converted by bacteria into fertilizer for the plants," explained Byron.

Instead of traditional dirt, clay pebbles are used in the systems. Ultimately the plan is to have an app for mobile devices that will control and make most everything in each Grove simple and automated.

"We can control lights, we can control humidity, fans, temperature, water," said Byron.

Able to grow just about anything, how much you harvest depends on the size of your system.

"If you're willing to commit to about a bookshelf, a beautiful bookshelf size to grow your own food, you can eat out of it every single day," Blanchet said.

Prototypes will be made available to people in the Boston area this winter, after which they should be available to everyone.